Athene
A reader for the books you already own.
Athene opens EPUB and PDF on iPhone and iPad, lays them out as real pages, and keeps out of the way. No account, no shop, no feed — just the book.
It reads what you put in it: files from anywhere on your device, or a whole library pulled straight off your own calibre server.
In development · coming to the App StoreThe three lights
Morning, Sunset, Night.
Athene doesn't have a brightness slider pretending to be a theme. It has three papers, each with its own ink, chosen for the hour you're actually reading in.
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk — which is a philosopher's way of admitting that we understand a thing best once it has finished happening, and a bookseller's way of explaining why the good reading light is the late one.
Set the page the way you want it and it stays that way: the typeface, the measure, the space between the lines. Change any of it mid-chapter and the words reflow under your thumb without losing your place.
Chapter one · 14
Athene can follow the clock and change on its own, or stay wherever you put it.
What it does
Everything a book needs, and nothing a shop does.
Real pages
EPUB and PDF, paginated rather than scrolled, with hyphenation and justification that hold up at any type size. Turn with a swipe or a tap in the margin.
Type you control
Typeface, size, measure, line height and margins, all adjustable while you read. Changes land on the page immediately — no reopening the book.
Highlights and notes
Press and hold to highlight a passage or attach a note. Bookmarks, a full table of contents and search across the whole book are one tap from the page.
A library, not a list
Covers come out of the books themselves. Arrange the shelf by hand, group books into collections, and switch to a list when the shelf gets long.
Your calibre server Pro
Point Athene at your own calibre-web or OPDS library and browse it as if it were already on the device. Search by author, series or format, and download over your own network — nothing passes through anyone else.
Ask the Owl Pro
A reading companion that answers questions about the passage in front of you: who this character is, what that word meant in 1890. It runs on your device using Apple Intelligence or a model you download — or against your own Ollama server if you keep one.
Athene Pro
One purchase. No subscription.
- The calibre shelf — connect, browse and download from your own server
- Ask the Owl about what you're reading
- The stacks view for large libraries
- Export your highlights and notes
- Shared with your family through Family Sharing
Everything else — the reader, the library, highlights, the three lights — is the free app, in full. You can connect Athene to your calibre server and confirm it works before you're ever asked to pay for anything.
Privacy
Athene has no server. There is nowhere for your reading to go, because nothing was built to receive it.
No account, no analytics, no crash reporter, no advertising identifier, no third-party SDKs. Your books, your position in them and your highlights stay in the app's own storage on your device. The only machines Athene ever talks to are ones you name yourself — your calibre server, your Ollama server — plus Apple, when you buy Pro. Read the full policy.